When 13-year-old Gabrielle Hanley has a question about something a teacher said in one of her classes at Cudahy Middle School, she doesn't dare raise her hand to ask her teacher to explain.
Neither does her friend, Cassandra Stiff, also 13.
Both girls worry that by asking the teacher to explain something they don't understand, they will be teased by classmates who think they are "stupid" or "dumb."
They say they know it's illogical to think that way, but they do.
"When you're in school, the thing you care about most is what other people think," Stiff said the other day as she and Hanley struggled to do their math homework during a "Homework Club" session in their school library.
"Like, you don't want to feel stupid," says Stiff, a colorful array of "jelly bracelets" on her left wrist, "because you have to see those people, like,
every day."
"You feel bad," Hanley says. "So, you just don't raise your hand and you try to get what (the teacher) is saying."
Specialists say Hanley and Stiff are hardly alone, estimating that as many as one in three students is fearful of raising a hand in class. The result can be devastating. Students who don't ask questions are likely to fall behind and become discouraged and lose interest in school, experts say.
"I think kids who aren't asking questions are likely to have incomplete comprehension of what they're learning," says Mel Levine, a pediatrics professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and co-chairman of All Kinds of Minds, a non-profit organization that studies differences in learning.
"That can catch up with them over time," Levine says. "They can pretty much disengage from the subject matter. They may develop broader fears and a whole sense of intimidation when they are in school."
Teachers are trying to combat the problem.
"I think that we as teachers try to make them feel safe to be able to ask questions."
Gress says the possibility of being ridiculed for asking questions is probably more imagined than real. But she doesn't take any chances. She has set up a voice message system that her students can call until 8:30 p.m. in case they need to ask her questions.
The reasons for being fearful of asking questions in class vary, says Jim Fay, co-founder of the Golden, Colo.-based Love and Logic Institute, an educational consulting firm used by several area schools, including Stormonth Elementary School in Fox Point.
"If you had a class of 30 kids, there'd probably be 30 different reasons why kids would be not quick to ask questions when they don't know," Fay says.
Those reasons can range from a child's temperament to a student's previous "luck" with asking questions in school, Fay says.
"If you have a kid who's real sensitive and he gets up the nerve to ask some questions early in his school career, and it doesn't work out too well for him, that really sinks in and probably sticks with him for a long, long time," Fay says. "It's going to take a lot of trust on his part with the other teachers to feel comfortable (asking questions)."
Levine says some students suffer from "expressive language problems," meaning they have difficulty articulating what is on their minds.
The problem is worse when such students encounter something in class that they do not fully comprehend.
"One of the hardest problems is to express something you don't understand," Levine says. "Some of these kids are kids who could formulate a question, but they don't have time."
He says in many classrooms students have only a few seconds to formulate a question.
"So, if you're not a really good linguist, by the time you figure out how to say your question, they're talking about something else," Levine says.
Which is one of the reasons after-school study groups, such as the Homework Club established at Cudahy Middle School, are beneficial.
There, students such as Stiff and Hanley get the opportunity to ask volunteer tutors about things they don't understand without regard to how their questions will make them look to their peers.
The tutors include Jenna Lequia, 17, a National Honor Society student at Cudahy High School who says she used to be fearful of raising her hand in class until her freshman year in high school.
She advises students who are afraid to raise their hands to "just do it, because eventually you're going to have to. You shouldn't worry about what other people think."
Her fellow tutor, Mary Sorrenti, 18, and a senior at Cudahy High School, voices similar concerns.
"What they have to be concerned about is getting their homework done and getting good grades," Sorrenti says, "because 20 years from now, those kids who are laughing at them won't be a part of their lives."
Retrieved on March 25, 2008 from http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=293485
